Malaysia will continue to allow Christian missionary schools to display crosses, a minister said according to a report Tuesday, after calls to have them removed triggered a furore.

Deputy Education Minister Noh Omar told parliament that there was no reason to take down the religious symbols in Muslim-majority Malaysia -- where ethnic Indian and Chinese communities practice Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.

"We will continue with the current practice, which is a tradition started a long time ago," he said according to The Star newspaper.

Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang had demanded an answer from Noh, saying that two lawmakers from the ruling National Front coalition had called for church influence at the schools to be curbed.

"There is growing intolerance and increasing extremism in Malaysia which are inimical to successful nation building," Lim said in a statement.

"The latest instance is the demand for the removal of the Christian cross and the demolition of Christian statues in mission schools," he added.

Lim said the comments -- including suggestions that Muslim children at the schools were being made apostates, or abandoning the faith -- had been widely circulated on the Internet.

"I asked Noh Omar... why the education ministry was condoning such extremism by its silence when such statements should be denounced without equivocation," he said.

Lim noted that many great Muslim Malay leaders had studied at mission schools, including influential deputy premier Najib Razak and the Sultan of Selangor state.

Issues of religion and race have become increasingly touchy in Malaysia, stirred by what critics say is the rising "Islamisation" of the multicultural country.

Ethnic Indians have been outraged by the destruction of hundreds of Hindu temples in recent years, one factor behind last month's unprecedented street rally of some 8,000 people complaining of discrimination against the minority community.